Category: Today

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., penned his Letter from Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama, for protesting segregation, on April 16, 1963.

On April 15, 1945, the Bergen-​Belsen concentration camp was liberated.

On April 14, 1775, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first American organization committed to the abolition of slavery, was formed in Philadelphia.

On April 14, 1818, Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language, one of the first lexicons to include distinctly American words. The dictionary, which took him more than two decades to compile, introduced more than 10,000 “Americanisms.”

On April 14, 1988, representatives of the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, the United States, and Pakistan signed an agreement calling for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. In exchange for an end to the disputed Soviet occupation, the United States agreed to end its arms support for the Afghan anti-​Soviet factions, and Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed not to interfere in each other’s affairs.

On April 13, 1743, Thomas Jefferson was born. Author of Notes on the State of Virginia and the first draft of the United States’ Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was also a scientist, philosopher, inventor, diplomat, and American politician. He also composed music, designed buildings, and translated works from his favorite French writers, whom he had met in his diplomatic missions to Paris: Volney and de Tracy.

On April 12, 1914, American economist Armen Alchian was born. His contributions to economic theory and teaching were many and varied — his textbook, co-​authored with William R. Allen, University Economics (also titled Exchange and Production), was widely considered one of the finest intermediate texts in microeconomics — but he remains perhaps best known for his work on property rights.

Alchian died in 2014, in late February, at the age of 99.

Fourteen years later, on April 9, 1928, American mathematician, singer-​songwriter, satirist, and pianist Tom Lehrer was born. He is best known for the pithy, humorous songs he recorded in the 1950s and ’60s, often parodying popular song forms, though he usually created original melodies when doing so. Standouts in black humor as in “I Hold Your Hand in Mine,” “The Irish Ballad,” and “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” vie for fan attention with songs dealing with social and political issues of the day, particularly when he wrote for the U.S. version of the television show That Was the Week That Was. These latter included “Pollution,” “We Will All Go Together When We Go” (a rousing nuclear Armageddon anthem), “Werner von Braun” (an arch look at America’s paperclip hero), and “The Vatican Rag” (memorializing Vatican III reforms).

In October and November of 2020, Mr. Lehrer relinquished all his musical works into the public domain. See his still-​existing website Tom Lehrer Songs.

On April 11, 1945, the American Third Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, a camp that would later be judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners.

Among those in the camp saved by the American soldiers was Elie Wiesel, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Shown in photograph: German citizens ushered to the camp by American soldiers, post-conquest.